RolStoppable said:
While digital is more profitable when you look only at an individual copy, it's actually more profitable to offer both digital and physical formats for games because the total volume of game sales increases tremendously. Like I said in my previous post, physical still accounted for ~70% of copies sold for games that are offered in both formats. It's something that you have ignored in your rush to defend anti-consumer third party decisions. The same logic of offering games in both formats obviously also applies to royalty fees. Physical vs. digital isn't a zero-sum game, because the removal of the physical format doesn't necessarily result in an additional sale for the digital version; it's actually quite common that the result is the loss of a sale. So far there have been no credible news that physical games will cost $10 more than digital ones in the USA. A price hike on physical only exists in Europe, so why is that? It's because European retailers have regularly undercut the digital prices, so now their typical undercutting will make digital and physical games cost about the same. That's how things work in the real world. The main reason why Switch 2 still offers physical games is obviously that the majority of Nintendo games sold on Switch 1 were on game cards. Only a stupid company would turn against their own customers. The use of game-key cards will likely become less prevalent over time. Game-key games will have a hard time becoming million sellers regardless of the strength of their IP. We've already seen this happening with all the code-in-a-box and partial download games on Switch 1. Every few years the industry happens to bet on the wrong horse; the industry sure wants to force an all-digital future, but that doesn't mean that gamers will go along with it. Other such failed endeavors include killing of the used games market, forcing always online, replace handheld gaming with mobile gaming, and most of all, trying to end Nintendo's run as a console manufacturer. Lastly, it's so laughable that you portray $70-80 for physical games as a downright terrible thing. You know why? Because the offered alternative of $70-80 for digital games is much worse. |
It's not really though, there's no scenario in which having some split of physical games is some how more profitable. Gamers are simply going to be forced to buy games digitally or get out of the industry, and Sony/MS/Nintendo all know the crowd of people that talk about quitting gaming entirely if they don't get physical games is a tiny actual audience. People adjusted to digital only for movies and their music, it's inevitable that gaming will go the same way.
If you only offer digital games, people will simply just shift to digital.
I disagree that Game Key Cards will be less prevanlent over time. I think it's going to be at least 90% of the third party game market and that's not going to be any different 2 years from now, 3 years from now. "Oooh! Let me cut my margin down by $8 a copy so I can have a physical 64GB cartridge" is not appealing to a publisher.
When PS6 is announced in a year or two and is a digital only platform with no disc drive period, that's basically going to be the nail in the coffin for physical games, all 3rd parties will basically bail out at that point. There's not going to be a situation where 3rd party Capcom or Activision or Square-Enix or EA or whoever who is now used to having digital only for PS6, XBox, and PC is going to be on Switch 2 suddenly like "you know what we need to do? Ditch these Key Cards so we can pay even more for cartridges again". Like yeah they need that like they need a hernia.
Next 5-6 years is going to be a nightmare for dev studios just trying to handle skyrocketing dev costs as is.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 12 May 2025
